Last Tango in Toulouse

by Mary Moody

  This aspect of the tour is a nightmare. I have to tell him where to take each turnoff in the maze of road systems through rural England. As he tends to speed we are constantly overshooting the turnoffs and then finding ourselves trying to turn the huge bus round in a narrow country lane. He drives so quickly through the villages that we can’t see and appreciate the architecture, and I seem to spend my entire day asking him to ‘slow down’ or ‘take it easy’. The standard of the hotels where we are booked is excellent, but unfortunately not always up to Roy’s expectations (he is staying with us for the entire tour). At one hotel they have allocated him a single room with a single bed and he digs in his heels. He’s just too large, he explains, to fit into a single bed and they don’t have another room available, except for a deluxe room with a massive four-poster. In the end the travel company agrees to pay the difference and Roy wallows in luxury – he had threatened to drive back to London and abandon us if he couldn’t get a decent bed to sleep in. One night, Roy and I are given adjoining rooms and the porters bring our luggage up at the same time, knocking on each of our doors. We open them simultaneously and I find myself facing a half-naked Roy, only his trousers intact, with his massive bulk filling the entire doorway to his room.

  ‘’Ello, dangerous,’ he says, leering at me.

  I quickly grab my suitcase and slam the door, locking it immediately. I have decided that Roy is more of a liability than an asset, but we are stuck with him until the end of the tour. Might as well make the best of it.

  The gardens, however, are gorgeous, the countryside lush and the small villages and towns are always interesting. We stay in Brighton and Bath and Stratford-on-Avon, where we see a Shakespeare performance in the evening. The group has bonded well and we have plenty of laughs along the way, trying to dodge Roy’s clumsy advances and retaining our sense of good fun. We have a farewell dinner at a smart hotel in Bury St Edmunds; the theme is the Jubilee, and I ask everyone to dress up for the occasion. Fortunately, the hotel has allocated us a private room – some of the outfits are utterly outrageous, especially our professional gardener, who comes as a court jester complete with striped tights and codpiece. I wear high heels and fishnet stockings with a pair of Union Jack knickers that some of the group have bought me for a joke, a little reminiscent of my can-can outfit from home, but I am careful to remain well covered with a shawl between my bedroom and the private dining room. I don’t think the hotel lobby is quite ready for this. However, late in the evening, after dinner and several bottles of Australian wine that we found at a local off-licence, our court jester decides to stand on his head in the foyer, causing a ripple of concern among the reception staff. We are quite certain they will be glad to see the back of us!

  Back in London we take part in some authentic Jubilee celebrations, standing on a bridge over the Thames for the impressive jet flyover and then taking a dinner river cruise. One of our group is nearly refused entry because she is wearing joggers rather than ‘feminine’ shoes, but I manage to sweet-talk the maître d’ who is being a bit of a stickler about the dress code. Once again, we have a hilarious night together.

  26

  I farewell my happy band of travellers in London and head for France to meet up with David, who has been at the house for several days, getting it ready for my arrival. The flight out of London is cancelled at the last possible moment – takeoff is aborted as we accelerate down the runway and the plane is turned round and taken back to the terminal. We are off-loaded unceremoniously and have to re-enter the airport through Customs and wait around in the baggage area to be told what alternative arrangements have been made for us. I am aware that David will be anxiously waiting for me at Toulouse airport and I only hope that the airline keeps those at the other end well informed.

  Unfortunately, my worst fears on this are realised. At Toulouse a ‘Cancelled’ sign is simply displayed against my flight and nobody at the information counter seems to know what is happening. I have no way of contacting David and he has no idea what has happened to me. Eventually, he tells me later, he badgered a clerk at the Air France desk into calling London to find out what had happened. The clerk doesn’t have very good English, and when he comes off the phone he simply shrugs his shoulders and says ‘engine failure’. David misinterprets this to mean some kind of accident and, by now frantic and distressed, dissolves into tears. Finally, from Heathrow, I manage to get a message through to Jock that I am catching another plane in a few hours, re-routed through Paris. David has been calling people in the village to explain why he is so late and, fortunately, at this point the news that I am okay finally gets through. I arrive in Toulouse seven hours behind schedule, dragging my luggage and a rather bedraggled Flossie, and we both acknowledge that it’s not a very good start to our time together in Frayssinet. Indeed, it seems to be some kind of portent.

  The next few weeks are not as blissful as we would have hoped. We have various visitors coming and going and, even though it’s fun seeing friends and sharing our joy in our little village house with them, it’s also quite stressful, and it means that we never really have any time to enjoy it on our own. And the underlying problem of the man from Toulouse is never very far from my mind. He knows that I am here with my husband and has not been in contact, but I am now feeling very nervous and unsure about meeting up with him when David eventually goes home, several weeks ahead of me.

  Until now all my thoughts about this man have been idealistically romantic, but the reality of the situation has begun to impinge on the fantasy. What if I meet him and we sleep together and it’s awful? I might have put myself and David through five months of agonising and heartache for something that could easily be less than wonderful. My relationship with David has become more passionate than it has been in years, and here I am about to betray his trust and go off with another man. Yet despite these doubts and fears I know that nothing can stop the momentum of the relationship at this stage. I have invested too much emotional energy to simply turn round now and say I’ve changed my mind.

  Part of my agreement with David is that I should have some time alone at the house each year, so that I can write and cook and socialise and gradually start some renovations. But David is unsettled at the idea of my being here alone, for obvious reasons. Although he never voices his concerns, I can tell from his general demeanour that he is uneasy and not very happy about leaving. Who could blame him?

  It’s quite a different experience for me, being in France with my husband, when I look back on the long period when I was here on my own. All the friends I have made are my friends, relationships that I established as a ‘single’ woman, and it is difficult for David, who is not as gregarious as me, to assimilate and become part of the group. We also like to do different things. While David likes to go out and socialise from time to time, he’s much more of a homebody and can’t keep up the pace of my action-packed French social life. The endless round of lunches, dinners and drinks leaves him drained, while I thrive on it. He would rather jump in the car and go for a long drive with no particular destination in mind, just exploring and finding whatever is at the end of the road. I love doing that too, but it’s hard to find time for days off with so much going on.

  ‘I seem to be cramping your style,’ he says when we are discussing the number of engagements I have pencilled into my diary for the forthcoming week. ‘Can’t we have a few quiet nights at home?’

  Here’s the rub. He is perfectly happy to stay home with me while I cook up something wonderful from the markets and we listen to music on the CD player (we still don’t have television). I love that too, but somehow there are very few nights where it is possible unless I start refusing invitations. We have to compromise, and we do. We get away on our own quite a few times, have relaxing restaurant lunches and dinners and some much needed early nights.

  David’s nephew Andrew and his girlfriend Sue are on a bike-riding tour of France and they call in to stay for a couple of nights, which is great fun. In their thirties
and full of energy, they love everything about this part of the country and we take them to markets and restaurants as well as cooking for them at home. The afternoon they set off south on their pushbikes after a simple lunch in our small kitchen, I decide to have a nap while David has a shower; our old hot-water service doesn’t provide enough water for four showers in a row and he has been waiting several hours for it to heat up again. As I am lying on our bed reading a novel I hear roars of excitement and loud shouting coming from the direction of our local bar, Le Relais. I suddenly realise what all the excitement is about. It’s the World Cup Final, and obviously the whole village has gathered in the bar to watch the contest on the big screen that Christian has put up for the football season. France was eliminated several weeks ago and the finalists are Germany and Brazil. I imagine, quite accurately, that the locals here will be barracking for Brazil: there’s still a deep-seated anti-German feeling in this region, which was a stronghold of the Resistance.

  I leap off the bed, apply some lipstick and call out to David in the shower, ‘I’m off to the bar.’

  ‘But it’s only two o’clock,’ he calls back. ‘It’s not nearly time for a drink yet.’

  ‘It’s the World Cup Final and I want to see how it’s received over here. It’s research, I’m looking for colour and atmosphere.’

  I can hear David’s sigh of resignation as I dash out the door. Bloody wowser.

  Le Relais is packed to the rafters and I can barely squeeze through the crowd to the bar, where Christian pours me a beer. I recognise most of the locals, men mainly, but there are also a lot of strange faces and they are reacting to every move on the big screen by shouting and jumping up and down and waving their arms. It’s pandemonium. There are four middle-aged men dressed in colourful kilts who are cheering loudly in perfect French – I find out much later that they are Scottish high school teachers, French teachers to be exact, who spend their annual school holidays in this region renting a gîte with their wives and children. Now I have no interest in football. I realise that this particular game is soccer (the ball is round) and, as one of our sons played soccer when he was eight or nine years old, I do have a vague idea about the rules. But I haven’t been following the season so I have no idea about the players or the politics or the passions involved.

  I eventually find a seat at a table with four strangers and, amid the din, I recognise their Irish accents. They are on holiday from Dublin and northern Ireland and they are downing beers and generally having a wow of a time.

  ‘Who’s winning?’ I ask lamely.

  ‘Nobody at this stage,’ one of them replies. ‘It’s a draw.’

  They are obviously keen for Brazil to get in front, and every time the ball nears the German goalposts there are loud roars and screams of approval. I never realised that watching a football game could be such a passionate and noisy experience.

  Pascal is there to try to keep the drinks flowing, because surely this will be one of the biggest days of the year for the bar. But some people are sitting on their drinks, taking advantage of the great venue to watch the game but not doing what is rightly expected – swilling down enough drinks to make it worthwhile for Christian and his employees. So the four Irishmen and I try to balance the equation by drinking beer after beer – long after the game is over (Brazil won) we are still sitting in the bar laughing and talking and having a good time. They are staying at a nearby gîte with their families and have left their poor wives at home with the children while they are at the bar getting sozzled and enjoying the game. Eventually, David comes looking for me and I introduce him to my four new friends. We take them back to the house – they are interested in the cost and logistics of buying a house in France – and later that day we meet up with them again, this time with their wives and children, at the bar and restaurant by the lake, the Plan D’Eau.

  ‘Typical of you,’ says David later, but with no malice, ‘to pick up four drunken Irishmen in the bar.’

  It was fun, just the sort of spontaneous thing that I love doing but that causes David a little anxiety. He thinks I am going through my second childhood.

  27

  Living in a foreign land is always a challenge, and not simply because of the inevitable language and cultural differences. It’s a question of feeling accepted, being part of the village in which you live, even if only for a few short months at a time. I often wonder, as I saunter down to the boulangerie for bread or to the Post Office to dispatch some mail, whether I will ever feel truly integrated into this village, no matter how friendly and welcoming the locals are. I am reminded that only a few decades ago people from one village to the next regarded each other as ‘strangers’ and would be upset at the notion of one of their children marrying ‘out’ by forming a liaison with someone from even ten kilometres away. Looking at the local phone directory, which lists residents and phone numbers village by village, it is obvious that people to this day have remained in their traditional areas, with large numbers of two or three family surnames in each village rather than spread out over a larger region. The names carved in stone on the memorial to the fourteen young people murdered by Germans in the village square in 1944 are still the surnames listed in the phone book, and they also mirror the surnames on the family vaults in the village cemetery. So while there has been a shift in population, with the younger generations moving to the cities to live and work, the family names still carry on, and I expect this will continue. Often, those who have lived and worked in the cities for thirty years eventually retire back to the village where they were born, and where their parents and grandparents probably always lived. It’s hard for any outsider, especially one from a totally alien culture on the other side of the world, ever to become a real local under these circumstances.

  For the French in the southwest, invasion by foreigners has been a way of life for more than a thousand years. The ongoing backwards and forwards by the English in particular in this region, formerly known as Aquitaine, is legendary, and to this day they maintain a strong presence, although now in a slightly different way – as local escapees from the awful English weather or as summer holiday-makers. They far outnumber the other foreign groups living full-time or part-time in The Dordogne and the Lot. The French have a funny acceptance of the English invaders, a sort of benign resignation to the fact that they will always somehow be lurking on the sidelines. The English, on the other hand, are simply using their common sense by rebelling against the ridiculous prices of houses in the United Kingdom compared with the comparatively cheap house prices in rural France. Not to mention the weather. Here in the south the sun shines much more frequently than in the United Kingdom; even when there is a summer storm a patch of blue eventually bursts through the clouds, and it’s a rare day that doesn’t include at least some cheerfully bright moments.

  In many ways the English interlopers are the saviours of the provincial French economy, with an estimated thirteen million English visitors crossing the channel to France every year. The hard facts are that tourism accounts for 8 per cent of the French gross domestic product, and the main visitors are from England, Germany and Holland. The English and Dutch tend to spread out right across the country, whereas the Germans are more likely to congregate in a handful of places and mostly enjoy resort-style holidays rather than setting up permanent part-time holiday homes. The English also prefer to seek out places that are ignored by other tourists, which is why they can be found in remote villages in the poorer and less popular parts of the country. The conservative estimate of what the English spend in France annually is 5 billion euros (about $10 billion Australian).

  The foreigners here fall into several categories. There are the slight misfits, who don’t feel at home in their native land for some reason and have opted for a totally foreign alternative. Some are expats who have lived and worked in exotic locations most of their lives and can never really settle back into their home country. Jock, for example, originally from New Zealand, lived in Australia then New York
for most of his working life; and Margaret Barwick, who with her husband David lived in tropical outposts on various diplomatic postings and then had no real ‘home’ to retire to, chose France for its relaxed appeal.

  Some are genuine alternative lifestylers, like Bob and Carole, who fled hectic London in search of rural tranquillity; some are gay couples, both male and female, avoiding claustrophobic family contacts, perhaps; and some are elderly retirees who just prefer the cost of living in the French countryside. Some people are escaping from something back home, perhaps a failed marriage or a business that has gone sour, and France seems like a great place to start again. For some it’s just the second-home option, a place to spend the summer that is more peaceful and secluded than overcrowded London in July and August.

  There are lots of people like Jock, who love the cheap wine and excellent food, but there are also quite a few younger people with practical skills – plumbers and electricians and builders who find no trouble getting work because so many houses are in the process of renovation. Some of these tradespeople work ‘black’, which is a problem for those who are prepared to go through the bureaucratic nightmare of becoming legitimate residents with work permits, and declare their earnings and pay taxes. Those who work for cash in hand can underquote, and this causes jealousies and rivalries with the local tradespeople.

  The final group of foreigners in France are the terminally boring, so frightful that their families have given them a one-way ticket in the hope of never seeing them again. These people can be difficult to avoid in social situations and are often loud and red-faced and scathing about the French. I suspect they would be critical of everything around them no matter where they lived; they are just a hazard of life in any community.